About a week ago, Matty Collector, the “boutique” site for Mattel action figure collecting, posted an announcement on Facebook regarding their delays in getting 2009 DC Universe product into the stores…

It is no secret that their has been a delay in getting new JLU figures into Target stores. This is entirely do to our factor[sic] shutting down last December. We have already found a new factory and we have new packs ready to ship, the problem is, while we waited for the new factory to produce the new 2009 figures, we had to continue and ship 2008 product to Target to hold the place in the toy aisle.

Stuff happens, especially on the distribution end of the action figure trade. But where Matty starts to lose me is in his pitch to clear 2008 inventory to make the newer items available…

So right now Target is full of 2008 packs. We need to get all of these sold before Target will take orders for new 2009 packs. So, to help, Mattel is funding a month long price reduction on 3 packs. So tell your friends and allies, swing by a Target and grab some JLU packs this month on sale. Once we move all of the older product, we have fresh new figures ready to ship and get into your hands!

Annnndd… that’s where you lost me. Having a Target about 5 blocks from my home, I get into the store at least once or twice a week, and I’m always checking the toy section in case something new or hard to find pops up. For what feels like months, I’ve been seeing the same stuff warming the pegs because Mattel had no business producing and distributing an excessive amount of certain figures that were never a guaranteed sale in the first place (see image above). But basically Mattel is saying, “Hey, we’re slashing prices, so hurry up and clear our inventory so we can make new merchandise available to you!” Over at a forum hosted by our friend and colleague, Action Figure Insider’s Julius Marx, the discussion on this has been robust.

Bear with me, I didn’t take any business or economics classes in college, so am I failing to grasp some supply and demand principles or something?

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that yet another has gained fabulous powers from the Masters of the Universe: newcomer Evan Daugherty has been tapped to write the latest draft of “Greyskull,” Warner Bros.’ new He-Man film.

Here’s what the Reporter says about this reboot:

Warners sees the big-screen version as a gritty fantasy and reimagines Adam as a soldier who sets off to find his destiny, happening upon the magical world of Eternia. There, Skeletor has raised a technological army and is bent on eradicating magic.

That said, Daugherty seems to be an industrious up-and-comer, working his way through various contests on the strength of his unproduced script “Shrapnel,” as well as doing freelance editing. His work has been bounced around from Script Pimp to Energy Entertainment.

Kung Fu Panda’s John Stevenson is attached to direct the film.

Can’t get enough of Geoff Johns’ run with Barry Allen? Well, now you’ve got 20% more!

The Source announced last night that the series — chronicling the return of the Silver Age Flash after about 23 years of martyrdom following the Crisis on Infinite Earths — will go from five issues to six. Currently, the series is dealing with the implications of Barry’s return, as well as the creation of a new Black Flash.

While there will certainly be fans who cry foul (or “poor planning”) on this, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Green Lantern: Rebirth lasted six issues, and I think an extra issue gives the series a chance to breathe a bit (as opposed to the compression of a series like, say, Legion of Three Worlds). It’s a matter of personal taste, I suppose. That said, because there are more pages involved, there is certainly a chance for slowdown. We’ll give you more updates as they arrive.

By Jimmy Palmiotti

Hey crew, want to thank everyone that came to visit Amanda and I at A COMIC SHOP in Orlando last week and wanted to give a heads up to the people in the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area that Amanda and I will be at TATES COMICS this Saturday the 16th from 1-3 to sign just about anything you have, including Power Girl and Jonah Hex. If you never have been to this store and live anywhere nearby, well, you are in for a treat! Its one of the biggest, best run and beautiful comic shops in the country…take a look at the web site and tell me it isn’t! Anyway, come on by to hang out and have some fun!

STAR TREK: If you didn’t see the movie yet… there are spoilers here… so skip this part. If you did, like me, well, let’s talk, shall we? We did the geek thing and my friends Brandon, Shawn, Amanda and I hit the IMAX theatre for the first showing.

OK. I enjoyed the film, and it’s a good film, and I will give it a 7/10 for pure fun… but honestly, there were a few things that kept nagging at me while watching the film other than that females really don’t pay an important role in the film except Uhura and Spock’s mom. Winona, please eat a cheeseburger and some fries, OK? We love you, and your body needs some weight to it.

Anyway, the casting was excellent all around and to me, that was the best part of the film… now, The idea that our bad guy is so undeveloped… and honestly, no background about him is given, made the movie and the “screw you” at the end mean nothing to me, except it shocked me how heartless Spock and Kirk were, killing a whole planet-sized ship of people. I am not a big Trek person, but this struck me as something they would never do. Am I wrong? Help me out, Trekkies.
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“He’s kind of a Victorian superhero, in a way. He’s so ridonkulously intelligent – no one can keep up with this man!”: There must be a rule about modifying the word “intelligent” with a made-up word like “ridonkulously,” and Mark Bellamy, who’s directing the  stage show Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, breaks it in this article about the world’s greatest non-Batman detective’s on-again, off-again popularity (which is currently on again).

Two reviews I really liked: Not that you need to read my reviews of reviews or anything, but I thought these were well wroth a read. Here’s Tom Spurgeon on Just A Simple Wedding, the concluding collection of Lynn Johnston’s For Better Or Worse strip, including the climactic wedding of Elizabeth Patterson to old whashisname, the guy everyone hates. Spurgeon doesn’t hate him, but he breaks out some professional wrestling metaphors to explain why the story that so heavily involves him doesn’t quite work. And here’s Nina “Virgin Reader” Stone on Power Girl #1, a pitch perfect review of the book from the perspective of someone who not only doesn’t have any preconceived notions about the character, creators or companies, but also doesn’t much care about any of them either.
News about comics you can’t read: Charles Yoakum has been collecting info about “the Miracleman saga,” and offers an extended quote on the subject from one of Alan Moore’s recent interviews, while Forbidden Planet offers a brief recap of the aborted Rick Veitch Swamp Thing/Jesus team-up, and links to a nice commissioned sketch of Swampy and Jesus on Vietch’s website.

“Kryptonese?” I thought their language was Kryptonian?: Lois Lane reads before bed time, and Mike Sterling looks over her shoulder.

So they’re really making a Youngblood movie?: MTV’s Splash Page has some new news and details that would indicate they are. I would have sworn that original announcement was a hoax, dream or imaginary story…

Down here in Texas, we don’t take any crap from anybody or anything–especially not a bunch of uppity fire ants. So what do we do when billions of the little bastards attack Texas, damaging electrical equipment and cute little baby cows? If you said “import billions of assassin phorid flies from South America to eat the ants from the inside out and turn them into zombies” you are correct.

The flies “dive-bomb” the fire ants and lay eggs, and then the maggot that hatches inside the ant eats away at the brain. Later, the ant gets up and starts wandering for about two weeks, said Rob Plowes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin.

Although the ant exhibits zombie-like behavior, Plowes said he “wouldn’t use the word ‘control’ to describe what is happening. There is no brain left in the ant, and the ant just starts wandering aimlessly.”

About a month after the egg is laid, the ant’s head falls off and it dies — and the fly emerges ready to attack any foraging ants away from the mound and lay eggs.

Screw pesticides. When we want to kill something, we make sure it knows it deserves to die.

TV Gossip, spoiler, and news columnist for Entertainment Weekly, Michael Ausiello, had some good news for comic book fans to report via Twitter tonight; Fox has given Human Target a go as a new fall series based on the strength of the pilot. The show, based on a DC, and later Vertigo comic, will be the second try for a TV version of the story. The first try lasted only seven episodes and will likely not be referenced in this version. Mark Valley is starring as Christopher Chance, the titular character, and will be supported by Jackie Earle Hayley and Chi McBride.

No word yet on how many episodes will be ordered or when the show will air.

It will be interesting to see what other show the series is paired with, as the fate of both Dollhouse and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, two series that might be naturals, are up in the air. Fox’s other sci-fi series, Fringe, has already been given a full second season order.

Hollywood Reporter later confirmed the news.

For the last few years, I have referred to Raving Toy Maniac as a reliable source for information regarding release schedules for toys and collectibles. In particular, the toy website was very dependable for updates on DC Direct product, like when their merchandise would be hitting stores and any subsequent rescheduling that may have been caused by production delays, what have you.

So I thought it was odd that no new RTM updates for DC Direct had dropped since last March. As a collector, I was usually able to find some useful information at least every couple of weeks. Imagine my surprise when I checked there first thing this morning to see RTM address the mystery as their headline piece!
From their statement on the matter:

We would get the shipping date information out of the weekly “Direct Channel” newsletter that DC would email to retailers and various media. For reasons not clear to us, DC has chosen to no longer include the media on their Direct Channel distribution list. (We do still get the monthly solicitations, so at least we’ll still have the pretty pictures to post once a month for you!)

When we asked DC about this, as part of their reply they directed us to their “The Source” blog on the official DC web site. They have some interesting stuff posted there, and maybe if you ask nicely, they’ll start posting shipping dates?

Strikes me as funny that a business would cut off media resources from getting the word out about their product for sale in comic book specialty shops. As internet-savvy as your average comic reader is, I think the decision to limit this information to select sources, namely the stores themselves, does the consumer a disservice. DC Direct product, from the action figures to the statues, is by no means cheap, and personally, getting the release schedules well in advance have allowed me to budget my money properly to get the sought-after items when they ultimately arrive. Compounding this is the fact that The Source, while being a nice new provider of teasers, previews and information regarding upcoming comic books, has yet to ever cover their DC Direct merchandise, best to my recollection.

DC Direct has not posted a public comment on this, so one can only wonder why the media at large got left out of the picture all of the sudden. Maybe it’s just me, but getting the word out to the most venues possible when peddling your wares would make sense, don’t you think? Any thoughts on this, readers, why DC would sever ties to a viable information stream?

I don’t blame Krypto. Superman’s best friend knows that his bosses at DC own a wider and deeper field of animal superheroes, and they even have a perfectly good animal superhero team name just laying around: The Legion of Super-Pets.

I’m sure the Dog of Steel is looking forward to checking out this week’s Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers #1 though. Who wouldn’t be? It’s the Inhumans’ giant teleporting bulldog with a tuning fork in his head teaming up with Kitty Pryde’s dragon, Speedball’s cat, Falcon’s falcon and an all-new, all-different Frog Thor. If that’s not the most unusual superhero team line-up to come out of the House of Ideas since Ghost Rider and Wolverine joined Spider-Man and The Hulk for a Fantastic Four line-up, than I don’t know what is.

Franklin Richards‘ Chris Eliopoulos writes and Marvel Adventures Avengers‘ Ig Guara draws, and although this is a limited series, Marvel’s giving it their ongoing, $2.99 price point. Huzzah!

This may be the book I personally am looking forward to the most this week, there are a ton of other new series starting up and big trades being released. Join me after the jump for my weekly scrutiny of the Diamond shipping list.

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Entertainment is a funny thing.

For those of you who have been keeping score, the Wolverine film opened to mostly negative reviews as well as having a mostly completed workprint of the film released nearly a month before opening day. Meanwhile, J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek franchise had been overwhelmingly praised both by the general reviewer community (and, full disclosure, by yours truly).

But look at the weekend openings: Wolverine earned more than $85 million, while Star Trek only netted $75 million.

It kinda makes you wonder: are reviewers just screaming into the wind? Is piracy meaningless? Or is Wolverine simply the best there is at what he does? Well, I’ve got some speculation of my own on that note.

First and foremost, let’s look at what Wolverine has in its favor that Star Trek doesn’t. First and foremost, Wolverine has that most coveted of demographics: women. Our very own Sarah Jaffe opined that the film was very pretty-boy heavy, and let me tell you, at my theatre there was a lot of catcalling at shirtless and/or nude Wolverine. But Hugh Jackman is a suave guy — winning People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year — and Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Kitsch, and even Liev Schreiber don’t exactly ugly up the picture.

Star Trek, despite its many virtues, doesn’t quite have that edge. Star Trek, despite its prominence in the national imagination, doesn’t have a tried and tested audience for the 20-something crowd. Even with the spectacular reviews, Zachary Qunto’s mini-bowl cut and the hordes of Klingon linguists out there make Star Trek a film that some geeks have to drag their significant others to. The women probably won’t regret it — and I would be remiss to not say that there are certainly female Trekkies out there in similar plights with their clueless boyfriends — but all the same, Star Trek’s targeted demographic isn’t as broad (no pun intended).

Anyway, so there’s the sex factor. For the fellas, there’s also the high-octane action side of it: the same people who are going to thrill to Live Free or Die Hard, just to give an example, are going to be fine with the simple action value. In other words: the stigma of comics being “one-dimensional” or “not something that’ll make you think” worked out in this film’s favor — even if that doesn’t exactly advance the plight of comics as a whole. That said, I think that that means that Wolverine is playing the short game with its numbers — while it’s continuing to rake in cash, I’m wondering how long that will last, with the fan culture having to deal not just with Star Trek, but Transformers, G.I. Joe, Terminator: Salvation…

But what about the piracy? We’ve already reported that Fox stated 4 million people downloaded the workprint. Well, you have to look at it like this: (A) at least some percentage wasn’t going to see the film (or at least pay for it) anyway; (B) some of these are outside the U.S.; and, most importantly (C) it was an unfinished print. With missing scenes and comically unfinished special effects, I don’t think the piracy was nearly as damaging as people thought. On the contrary, I think the workprint actually provided some immense cover for Wolverine, as people resolved NOT to review an unfinished copy of an action movie. By the time reviewers started feeling comfortable getting reviews out, I think many people unconsciously stayed away from them, keeping the negative buzz down about the film. In other words: everyone knew Wolverine was coming, but not much more.

That’s actually not too different than Star Trek. The film pulled a late marketing blitz, but obviously not equal to the video games/comics/FX marathons/iPhone apps/Papa Johns pizza deals that Wolverine had. It also had to contend with the image of J.J. Abrams — there are so many people out there who are burned out by Lost (either trying to pick it up, or simply displeased with how the current season is going) that despite the true accessibility of the film (at least to a non-Trekkie like myself) as well as great reviews, some people may equate Star Trek to a convoluted continuity beast like Lost.

Finally, I think the last part has simply to do with timing. While Star Trek opened to compete with Wolverine, Wolverine opened almost completely unopposed, save for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Battle for Terra — two films which, as I explained above, basically lost their target audiences to the Ol’ Canucklehead. Combine that with it being the first film of the summer season, and you have a recipe for huge box office gross. The real question is whether or not Wolverine will take a dive once initial interest runs out, a la Watchmen. (Considering Wolverine has already experienced a 68 percent drop between its first and second week, I’m not sure his healing factor will ride out the summer.)

With all the spectacular reviews as well as late-breaking PR (including a stint on SNL this weekend), I’m predicting that Star Trek will be playing the long game, soaking up box office dollars for months and months like Iron Man before it. But with a bunch of other genre heavyweights in tow for this summer — including the sixth Harry Potter film — only time will tell exactly how this will all shake up.

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Connor: “This summer is all about kicking zombie-Black Lantern ass.”

Kyle: “Hey, I have a big summer in ’09, too!”

Connor: “Oooooh, Cap comes back. Where have I heard that story before?”

Kyle: “At least Red Skull is scary. Star Sapphire just makes me wonder when dinner is.”

Oh, Superman, where did you go wrong?

I’m always a sucker for comics-related comedy, and Again with the Comics has performed admirably in this regard. Blogger Brian Hughes has managed to track down a copy of the pulped Elseworlds 80-page giant, which was presumably scrapped for a story involving Superman’s babysitter Leticia Lerner, who put young Kal-El in a microwave. (And yeah, the story was later reprinted anyway in Bizarro Comics.)

While Clark Wilkes Booth is still my favorite of the book, I think Young Darkseid’s expulsion from the Legion of Superheroes or the (aw yeah!!!!) Tiny JSAers earn an honorable mention.

[Link spotted via Journalista]

A month ago, I wrote of The Unwritten, “I haven’t been this stoked for a new series since I first read about DMZ.”

The first issue hits tomorrow, and I can assure you that my first (and second) instincts were correct.

The story starts with an excerpt from one of the Tommy Taylor books, which in the course of the story are prose but here are illustrated, panels fading into one another with text overlaid, bringing the first layer of the story–the novels–right into the main layer.

We’re swept from the novel into a comic convention, watching Tom Taylor defend his existence, first to actual writers who doubt his reasons for being there, then his fictional existence to an overexcited cosplayer (or is he?) and finally quite literally, to a fan who’s done some research and wants to know exactly who Tom is.

Far from just an existential crisis, Tom is thrown into a real crisis–his livelihood and even life are in danger.  Peter Gross’s art subtly underlines this point, spinning its point of view around Tom from panel to panel, leaving you off balance.

Insets of a Web news story and TV panels add more and more layers to Tom’s story, pulling every mass medium into the narrative and leaving the reader stuck with Tom, trying to figure out what’s really going on before a flying brick or an overintense fan or perhaps a villain straight out of fiction steps in to end Tom’s story for good.

This oversized first issue has more twists than entire series do, but unlike most first issues, it doesn’t define the rules of the world we’re reading. Instead it offers up rules only to shatter them, introduces characters only to turn them around.  The only rules it gives us are the rules of stories, and the rule there is that you can get away with anything if you can tell it convincingly. You can even start a religion if your story is good enough.

A lot of books have been offered up as spiritual heirs to Sandman, but The Unwritten, like Gaiman’s classic work, is a story about stories, though perhaps in a bit more concrete fashion–a story that explores the medium as well as the nature of stories.

Plus, it’s a dollar. So why not try it?

Perhaps one of the more surprising series to be coming out from DC Comics is a Keith Giffen-penned, Matthew Clark-drawn version of the Doom Patrol.

Well, the Source has revealed some character designs from Clark himself, of Negative Man and Elasti-Girl:

The Doom Patrol have always been DC’s “misunderstood” heroes, as they have been deformed and/or otherwise scarred, both physically and emotionally. Indeed, their pop culture significance has been widely discussed, even culminating in an urban legend that X-Men was a rip-off of the series.

The series has also drawn the best and the brightest of creators, including John Byrne, Wednesday Comics’ John Arcudi, as well as an acclaimed run by Grant Morrison.

Here is a quick run-down on the latest about the new Pop Gun War. Emily is somewhere on tour with her rock band and is staying at some seedy Motel in the middle of nowhere. She slams the door on a nosy mailman and that seems to set off a chain of events. Like Alice in Wonderland, she gets propelled down a portal to another world full of dark mysterious figures. (more…)

Farel Dalrymple’s art is art you can love. It takes you to a good place where artist rankings and hipster factors don’t matter. This is just plain good stuff. I had a chance to chat with Farel at the Stumptown Comics Festival and this interview resulted. The man sure gets around and despite any modesty on his part, he is a drawing machine. Check out his LiveJournal. It says it all.

Farel Dalrymple is well known for his on-going comics series, Pop Gun War, published by Dark Horse Comics. He is the founder of the influential Meathaus collective and the winner of a Xeric Grant and Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. This year he is nominated for a couple of Eisner Awards for his collaboration with writer Johnathan Lethem on the Marvel Comics 10-issue series, Omega the Unknown. Currently, he is at work on The Wrenchies. This 250-page, full-color comic is a postapocalyptic fantasy that takes place 3,500 years in the future, featuring a group of street children called “The Bolts.” It is due out in 2010 by First Second. (more…)

Well,  I didn’t get a chance to watch this weekend’s SNL, only because I went to see Star Trek. (Twice.)

But thanks to the wonders of Hulu, you can see that Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto wanted to urge Trekkies that this film would be faithful and reverent to the original series… even if fans might want to kill them.

I think my favorite part of this is either Kenan’s Vulcanized death glare, or Leonard Nimoy’s explanation of people who don’t like the movie. Love it or hate it, you still gotta respect the Vulcan.

Caleb mentioned this before, but I thought I’d give it its own post. Floating World Comics held its Full of Pryde art exhibit on May 7, and now a bunch of the art is up on eBay. All proceeds go to the Oregon Hemophilia Treatment Center.

I love seeing a bunch of different artists reimagining the same character, and I can’t think of a better way to raise money for a good cause. Plus, I’ve loved Kitty Pryde since the X-Men animated series back in my childhood, and comic shop art shows are great fun. All the images are up on the blog and more photos from the exhibit available here.

(Art above, and h/t for the story Joelle Jones.)

Star Trek has legs. It has heart. And, oh yeah, it has balls. What J. J. Abrams manages to accomplish is the Star Trek we’ve always wanted to see. Talk about the fans all you want, but we’re all Trekkers now.

Anyone who still wants to pretend not to know how to form a Vulcan hand greeting is the real nerd. We’ve gotten way past that. We even have a United States Space Shuttle named after The Enterprise so we moved on a long time ago. It’s become part of us and Abrams knows this. He knows we’d all love to see Spock and Kirk on a wicked adventure and he delivers.

The timing was off for the first Star Trek movie. It couldn’t compete with the memory of Star Wars that it had hoped to exploit. It was as if the movie was still, in its own oddball way, as ahead of its time as the original TV show. This time though, Abrams is behind the controls with all his fast paced high energy and his writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers, Fringe). 

A bit into the movie, we get our first wish fulfillment with a scene of a tween Kirk who has taken his dad’s Mustang for a spin out in the open roads of futuristic Iowa and nearly drives himself over a cliff during a high speed chase with a robocop. All this while we hear “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys in the background. It’s the first sign that we’ve finally gotten a Star Trek on a much higher level.

Zachary Quinto, as Spock, and Chris Pine, as James T. Kirk, by their very presence, take the movie into warp speed. They have us at hello, live long and prosper. It makes their take on any old Star Trek relic all the more engaging. When Spock must use the Vulcan nerve pinch to knock out Kirk, we laugh not at Quinto but with him for doing it so cool. The same can be said for all the other pivitol characters with a special focus on some backstory about Bones. And then there’s Uhura who becomes entangled in more than one must-see scene. You even have Leonard Nimoy providing more than a cameo. 

We also have the visual effects led by George Lucas’s ILM this time out completing the transformation to a far more robust Star Trek. But, it’s those quieter moments that really add something. The lush cinematography of Dan Mindel (Mission: Impossible III) frames the characters artfully and hints at how much farther this movie could go beyond the built-in constraints of a franchise. The design of the film, led by Ryan Church, holds the whole thing together reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Titanic.  

This Star Trek enjoys massive resources from Paramount Pictures. It was meant to be the ultimate reboot, visually and artistically as possible. If Abrams thought you really wanted a more art house version of Star Trek, he’d have found a way. But he seems to have worked it out for the best possible result and gotten to the heart of the matter which is a story about characters, friendship and idealism.